1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a printer having an edit function which carries out enlargement or reduction for each page.
2. Discussion of Related Art
There have been conventionally adopted the following two methods in the case where contents of a plurality of pages are summarized and reduced to print them in one page, or contents of one page are enlarged to divide and print them in a plurality of pages. The first method is one in which contents are edited in accompaniment with reduction or enlargement so that the contents are brought into a desirable page constitution in a host computer in advance, and page data after the edit are input into a printer to carry out printing. The second method is one in which contents of a plurality of pages are first printed as usual by a printer, and thereafter a plurality of printed documents are joined together to carry out duplication in accompaniment with reduction, using a copying machine or carry out duplication in accompaniment with enlargement for a desirable page, and thereafter the documents are clipped to a desirable size and divided.
However, in the first method, it is necessary to prepare the above-mentioned edit function with a host computer. Moreover, the host computer is burdened heavily in terms of processing time. Furthermore, when data are transferred from the host computer to a printer, the transfer has been carried out based on a down-load system in which bit pattern data corresponding to each print image element are transferred. Accordingly, an amount of data to be transferred has been voluminous. Consequently, the transfer time for data becomes long, and the host computer is burdened heavily too.
Also, in the second method, a paper which has been once printed is subjected to manual processing, and then must undergo duplication. Consequently, it is a serious problem that not only a lot of time and labor is imposed on an operator, but also the picture quality of the printed matter is deteriorated by duplication.